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/ 22 January 2009
On the border between Gaza and Egypt, dozens of people are digging and clawing, by shovel and hand, the mounds of rubble left by Israeli bombings.
Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu on Wednesday plunged into the harsh reality of the conflict in Gaza, where a tearful Palestinian family recounted losing loved ones in an Israeli attack and the ruling Hamas movement expounded its hard-line stance. The South African cleric is heading a team of United Nations human rights observers.
Battling against a deeply patriarchal society, Arab Israeli and Palestinian lesbian women are uniting to break the taboo of homosexuality and politicise the right to be female and gay. ”We are Palestinian, we are women and we are gay,” is the slogan coined by Aswat, the association campaigning for lesbian Arabs to be accepted in Israeli and Palestinian society.
One Jordanian was killed and at least seven Palestinians wounded as rising tensions between the rival Hamas and Fatah factions erupted into heavy fighting near Parliament in Gaza on Monday. A driver at the Jordanian representation was killed in the running gun battle close to the Legislative Council building.
In the al-Shifa hospital, the walls are decrepit and dirty. The elevators are broken. It is a sign of the times in Gaza City, brought to its knees by the international community’s refusal to do business with a Hamas-led government. ”If this continues, the majority of our services will cease to operate in two weeks’ time,” said Dr Jumaa al-Saqqa, the spokesperson at the impoverished Gaza Strip’s main hospital.
In the skies above Gaza, an Israeli drone circles slowly overhead before its distant buzz is drowned out by the whistling of a missile. "You see, this is what our life has become," says Abdallah as he watches the missile explode nearby in a massive cloud of dust.
The discovery of deadly bird flu in both Israel and the Palestinian territories is pushing the two sides to work together despite plummeting relations as Hamas prepares for government. Israel confirmed on Thursday that the H5N1 strain that is dangerous to humans had been found in poultry in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.
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/ 23 October 2005
Judges, prosecutors, attorneys, even law clerks and accountants involved in cases linked to Saddam Hussein’s decades of rule in Iraq live in constant fear of being targeted for death. Last week’s murder of Saadoun Janabi, attorney for one of Saddam’s seven co-defendants, points to the delicate issue of protecting the hundreds of people involved in the case.
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/ 23 September 2005
Six Iraqi civilians were killed and 10 wounded on Friday in a bomb blast on a public bus in Baghdad as supporters and opponents of the draft Constitution started in earnest to campaign ahead of the October 15 referendum. United States President George Bush has warned that Iraq should brace for more violence in the next three weeks.